Ok, so Sweden I love you, part 2. But Norway, show me what you got ! I left Göteborg this morning, and tonight I’m writing from a youth hostel, in Oslo. So, everything worked really well. I passed half way now and still got four full days to be on time in Bodo. The hardest part today was to get out of Göteborg. I needed more than an hour and two different spots to find that really nice Lady who dropped me fifty miles further. Twenty minutes, then Tobias, electro-body-music fan like some of my Belgian friends, drove me to Uddevalla. Tobias said: “You’re the first hitchhiker I saw in years ! “. That’s how it was in Sweden, and I guess it will be the same in Norway. Hitchhikers are so rare than car drivers must think:

a) This drug addict is gonna kill me.

b) It’s funny, what is this guy doing here ?

Fortunately for me the B category exists…

 

So back to Uddevalla, 20 minutes more, and two young guys driving a Mustang really fast picked me up to Stromstad, really close to the Norwegian border. They gave me one of these Snus tobacco thing (again, after my first one with Robert the day before). I think I’m becoming addicted to this thing.

 

Then ten minutes later, surprise ! An old nurse took me this time. Lina works in Norway, in Fredrikstad. I jumped into her car but she first asked me if I wasn’t a drug addict. I said no, even if the Snus thing was still under my upper lip. So I crossed the border with Lina. Norway, last country, but I’m still far away from the end of the road.

 

So I waited near Fredrikstad, something like a minut before Jan, reallytanned skin after a month spend in Greece, became my first Norwegian driver.Jan was driving a really expansive car. He told me about his vacation in Greece, and his next vacation, fly fishing in a REALLY expansive place. I forgot the name but I can remember that he said the king is fishing salmon

there. Even if Jan is rich, he did a lot of hitchhiking when he was younger. Jan is the first person I met who have heard of the Trenafestivalen.

 

Jan left me just before Moss. Ten minuts waiting and then Sharaf took me. Driving a red Volkswagen van, Sharaf is Norwegian with Somalian origins. He was really excited about the world cup, he was speaking a lot, and really fast.  He left me in Oslo, and then I found my way to a youth hostel. Oslo seems special, especially at this time of the year. So green !  For me, it looks more like a big garden with buildings in some places, but I only saw a very little part of it. (This is not really interesting but after all, I’m going to a music festival… May be you know a band called Of Montreal. They did that great record called “Hissing Fauna: Are You The Destroyer ?”. The whole record is about the year that the lead singer/songwriter spend in Norway, passing through a nervous breakdown. In a song, he is singing: “I felt the darkness of the black metal bands”. Anyway, lots of names that i noticed in Oslo

today reminded me of titles of this album. For example “Heimdalsgate Like a

Promethean

Curse<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000X6XB1G/rateyourmusic-20/ref=nosim/>”

or « A Sentence of Sorts in

Kongsvinger<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000X71G30/rateyourmusic-20/ref=nosim/>

».

).

 

Forget it…

 

The youth hostel is nice and I washed my clothes for the rest of the journey. Not much highways anymore, not much youth hostels neither. I will use my tent more often and I don’t know when you’ll have some more news from me…

But don’t worry, I’ll find my way…

 

Olivier.